The agency and its epidemiologists track disease trends and operate state labs, coordinating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to combat bioterrorism and halt the spread of dangerous pathogens. It also handles environmental safety, consumer safety ...

At our 5/4 symposium on health care, state Rep. Myra Crownover, R-Denton, the chairman of the House Public Health Committee, and state Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, the chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, talked about how the issue is playing out in the 84th session.

UPDATED: Debate on legislation to re-evaluate a state health agency morphed into a fight over abortion in the Texas House on Thursday, and the bill was pulled down after a pair of anti-abortion amendments were added to the bill over the author's objections.

Two psychiatrists at Terrell State Hospital resigned this week after they were accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from a pharmaceutical company to use their state positions to promote the company’s products.

The state agency responsible for supervising, monitoring and providing treatment to sexually violent predators is out of space to house sex offenders being released from prison, agency officials told state lawmakers on Wednesday.

Texas hospitals want state lawmakers to find a way for the state to draw down billions in federal Affordable Care Act dollars to cover the uninsured and alleviate the burden on local taxpayers. Health officials hope the Legislature looks at a program in San Antonio that they say has the makings of a Texas solution. This is the third video in our eight-part State of Mind series.

The state's top public health official, David Lakey, will leave the Department of State Health Services to accept a joint position with the University of Texas System and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler, sources familiar with the plans say.

Gov. Rick Perry has championed private-market health care solutions and criticized public programs like Medicaid for being inefficient. Alexa Ura and Edgar Walters write about that and other notable health care issues that have come up during Perry's tenure.

This week in the Roundup: Gov.-elect Greg Abbott highlights the issues he'll prioritize in the coming legislative session, the state loses out on millions of federal dollars for pre-kindergarten programs, and Texas' health care system is on the cusp of a major overhaul.

With the endorsement Wednesday of the Sunset Advisory Commission, legislators are set to move forward with a consolidation of the state's five health agencies into a single health commission with seven divisions.

Saying Wednesday that low-income Texas women will no longer wonder how to find out about state-provided health services, Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Kyle Janek unveiled a new information website.

When federal appellate judges ruled last week that the state could enforce strict new abortion restrictions while a legal challenge winds its way through the courts, Texas was left with just eight abortion clinics authorized to perform the procedure. While many Texas women now live hundreds of miles away from such facilities, some may still have another option: their doctor’s office.

In a new report, the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission recommended that the state’s health and human services system undergo a massive overhaul. Here are five takeaways from the Sunset Commission's report.

Texas health officials have expanded to 100 their list of people who may have had contact with a man in the Dallas area confirmed to be infected with the Ebola virus. Eighteen people are already under observation.

More than 700 infants and 40 employees may have been exposed to an employee with tuberculosis at an El Paso hospital. An investigation "cited the hospital for deficiencies that represent immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety," a state health department spokeswoman said. State and federal officials say the facility has been given 23 days to fix its problems, or it could lose crucial funding.

Three years after slashing family planning funding, lawmakers have created new programs to restore access to care. Now they want to consolidate those programs to improve access to family planning, cancer screenings and other health services for the state’s poorest women. Critics say more changes are the last thing Texas' embattled women's health system needs.

Greg Abbott made big headlines this week for suggesting that citizens get information about the storage of hazardous chemicals in Texas not from state officials but from the businesses that house them. Check out his full remarks.

In light of a recent surge of undocumented immigrants crossing the state’s southern border, the state health department has sent 2,000 state-purchased flu vaccines to a federal shelter housing unaccompanied minors in South Texas.

When Texans get an X-ray or an MRI, the person performing that scan is licensed by the state. Now, the state is considering doing away with the licensing of X-ray technicians and 11 other types of health professionals. Some say that would put patients at risk. A Sunset Commission hearing Wednesday is set to address the issue.

A detainee sleeps in a holding cell at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility, Wednesday, June 18, 2014, in Brownsville, Texas. CPB provided media tours Tuesday of two locations in Brownsville and Nogales, Ariz. that have been central to processing the more than 47,000 unaccompanied children who have entered the country illegally since Oct. 1.

As the state's top elected officials debate how to halt a recent surge of immigrants — many of them unaccompanied minors — across the Texas-Mexico border, health officials and volunteer doctors are voicing concerns over what they say is the more serious challenge: a looming medical crisis.

Once again, the state's care for mental health patients is under legislative scrutiny, and county sheriffs and other local officials are hoping the state will fix a problem that has spilled into their domains. In Harris County, one-third of the inmates on an average day need psychotropic drug treatments.